Only then did she realize that they were the center of dozens of curious stares. Including her mother-in-law, and Makenna, who stood beside the hapless footman at the entrance to her bedchamber. He still held the salver with the black file. Aisla did not know what was in there, but she had the strongest urge to see it sunk to the bottom of the loch.
“Bràthair,” Makenna said with an anxious glance at Aisla, who smiled tightly for her sister-in-law’s benefit. “I’ll leave ye two alone.”
Niall took the folio from the man and escorted her back into the room to her bed. She sat, clasping her hands together to keep from shaking. Or doing something rash. All she wanted to do was throw them around his neck and never let go.
“Ye’re looking better,” he said eventually. “How are ye feeling?”
“Fine.”
Her husband drew a deep breath, the long fingers of his right hand drumming on the face of the black case. “I suppose I was being a coward, aye, but I could no’ face ye.” He nodded to the black file. “’Tis done as ye wanted.”
His voice was grim. Nothing in it gave her any hope that he might feel any different. That there was something between them worth saving.
“Is that it, then? The divorce?”
Niall’s eyes met hers, then dropped away. “Aye and nae.” He stood and unwrapped the toggle from the slim file and set it in front of her. “Turns out our marriage was never official. There’s no’ a record of it.” He raked a hand through his tangled hair. “That bloody, sotted priest never filed it.”
“What are you saying?” she whispered, hearing the words but unable to make sense of them.
“That ye are free to find a husband who will make ye happy, Aisla. That ye are free to go back to Paris and have the life ye deserve. Ye have what ye came for…freedom from me and a life ye loathed.”
“I didn’t…” She broke off, her breath coming too fast. Her body felt like it was encased in ice. “Is that what…you want?”
“I want ye to be happy,” he said eventually, moving toward the window, his arms folded across his chest. His voice was calm and his expression gave away nothing. “I want my clansmen to be happy. Perhaps ’tis a blessing in disguise. This way we can both move on. Perhaps we’ll both have the chance to get what we want.”
What she wanted was him.
The strength that had been buoying her spirits suddenly flagged as delayed understanding hit her. There was no divorce. No second chances. They’d never even been married. There was nothing left between them, not even the idea of marriage that had kept them in each other’s lives. Aisla felt a keen sense of loss, that the only thing tethering them together was finally gone. But then again, she’d never had him in the first place.
“Niall…”
He turned, slowly. “Dunnae make this any harder than it has to be.” He stopped at the door, his eyes shuttered. “Be well, Aisla.”
The first of her tears hit the note still clutched in her hand. The one he’d meant to leave her with. She should have listened. He’d hoped to be kind, to avoid the crippling devastation she now felt, as if her heart was being torn from her chest and minced to pieces. More tears joined the first, drenching the paper and the ink upon it.
Dearest Aisla. Dearest Aisla. Dearest Aisla.
The letters blurred into unrecognizable shapes.
Aisla wept her heart out. She wept for the girl she’d been and the love she’d lost. She wept for all those years they’d spent apart and the circumstances that had brought them back together. She wept for having hoped that things could have been different. She wept for an ending equally as tragic as Shakespeare had written for Romeo and Juliet. She laughed, hollowly, through the wretched sobs at the irony.
The scratch of a pen, or lack thereof, had ended them all.
She wiped her tears away, crumpling the note in her fist and closing the file Niall had left. None of it mattered anyway. She would be gone soon, her connection to Maclaren well and truly severed. Perhaps he was right that the bungled-up marriage papers were a blessing in disguise.
Their sad tale of woe was at its bitter end.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A rotten stench woke Niall, and the second he was conscious again, he recalled the familiar, greasy sensation of having slept with a whole bottle of whisky in his body. Only he hadn’t, thank God. Though the temptation had been like a siren to his dejected state, he’d only consumed one glass when he’d returned to Tarbendale. Nothing would have been able to lift his mood, and in fact he’d known for certainty that whisky would only leave him feeling worse.
He sniffed, wrinkling his nose at the sour odor, and recognized that none of it came from his person. It came from the two men still sleeping off the effects of a ridiculous drinking game that had taken them into the wee hours of the dawn. The alcohol permeated their every pore, every hair, every inch of their bodies. Bloody hell, they stank to high heaven. He sat up from where he’d been slumped over on the study sofa, and the rest of the room came into focus. Everything ached, but it was not because of alcohol. It was because of…her.
Hamish sat up with a grunt, staring around, his eyes glassy and a tuft of bright red hair sticking up to one side. “Watsat?”
Ronan jumped to his feet, looking more worse for wear than Niall had ever seen him. He wanted to smile. His brother had needed some loosening up. Being born as the heir and bred to be a duke had given him a stick up his arse for most of his life. It was gratifying to see his perfect brother looking less than perfect for once.
Ronan rubbed a huge hand through his hair and yawned. “Ye have some catching up to do, brother, if ye plan on drinking the way ye used to.”
Hamish grimaced at the booming voice. Ronan sat back down at Niall’s desk, propping his booted feet on the slew of papers there, acting and sounding as though he hadn’t consumed more than a bottle of whisky. Niall laughed—Ronan would never let something as middling as half a cask of whisky affect him.
“Nae,” Niall said. “I dunnae plan to. But I plan to watch the two of ye try to drink each other under the table more often.”
“Not even one bottle in and Hamish was snoring like a wee bairn, thumb in his mouth and all,” Ronan said.
“Speak for yerself, old man,” Hamish groaned, trying to stand and reeling as if the floor tipped under his feet. “I’ll take ye on any time, any place.”
“Ye could have fooled me.”
Hamish glowered at Ronan. “What are ye even doing here? Dunnae ye have some duking to do or some such?”
His brother had been with him the night before, when Hamish had arrived with several bottles of whisky. The news had traveled fast, it seemed. This time, Ronan had left the bottle alone, letting Niall decide for himself whether it was the answer he needed. He’d had one glass, savoring the taste of the whisky and nursing it for several hours while his brother and Hamish had decided to try to out drink each other. It had been amusing to watch and had taken his mind off the hollowness in his gut. At least for a little while.
It had been barely a day since the revelation that he and Aisla had never been married in the first place, and Niall had returned to Tarben Castle. He’d worked tirelessly the last six years to perhaps, one day, prove to Aisla that she had made a massive mistake leaving him. And for what? Not only was she leaving again, but he’d never needed to work so hard to begin with. If he really thought about it, everything from the mines to sobriety to Tarben Castle and his own disciplined strength, had been for her. He dragged himself out of his maudlin state of mind with a sharp shrug. She might have been the catalyst, but he’d done those things for himself, too.
He glanced at his brother. “Why are ye here?”
“I’m here because I didnae want ye waking up in any sort of comfort, brother,” Ronan answered, taking that moment to slam his feet down onto the floor, and strike the top of the desk with his massive hands. The sounds were like cannon fire and Hamish moaned behind him, clutching his head between his hands.
“Quit yer moaning,” Ronan said with a laugh and then turned to Niall. “’Tis practically noon, ye ken, and I’m sure yer men are wondering where the devil ye are.”
“I’ll get there soon,” Niall said. They’d get on without him—they were well trained and loyal. It was one of the things he was proudest of, that he’d taken on people no one else would hire, that he’d given them a second chance. He’d lost his hand, but he’d never lost his spirit. No, it’d only taken a false marriage and being in love with a woman who didn’t love him in return to do that. He crossed the room, toward the windows, the bright sunlight daggering his eyes. A storm threatened on the horizon, the gray clouds rolling in swiftly.
“They’re lucky to have ye,” Ronan said. He turned to meet his brother’s gaze, blue eyes so similar to his, and he read the sincerity in them. It was a compliment of the highest persuasion, especially coming from someone as exacting in his standards as his eldest brother. “I’m proud of ye, ye ken.”
Niall’s throat felt tight with emotion. “I had a good advisor.”
He looked through the paned glass. He had a view of the courtyard below, and his blood, though not sluggish thanks to any whisky, slowed instantly. There was a coach and four waiting below, a pile of luggage strapped to the back racks. He recognized the trunks and valises.
“Laird?” came a timid voice at the door to the study.
“What is it?” Niall answered, his eyes still following the people below as they readied the carriage and horses. The top of one head was instantly familiar. Leclerc. He stood by the carriage’s open door, his arms crossed as if waiting for something. Or someone.
“Lady Aisla to see ye, laird.”
Of course. And it was Lady Aisla, not Lady Maclaren. As it should be, he thought as he finally turned around. Aisla entered the study, and the sight of her leaning some of her weight on an elegantly carved walking cane made his heart catch in his chest. She still appeared rather weak, though her facial bruises had yellowed some, the cuts and scrapes having healed well. But even with the remnants of her accident, she was beautiful. Her hair had been pulled atop her head with golden ringlets framing her face, and her gown, though modestly cut, still hugged her curves, accentuating her hips and breasts, and even the slim width of her shoulders. He drank her in, every inch of her, and the sight was enough to negate all the numbing work his brain had done the night before.
“Aisla,” Ronan said in greeting, and then with a warning glare toward Hamish, dragged the bigger man with him, and left the study.
She gave Ronan a warm smile, touching his arm lightly as he passed her at the entrance. She wrinkled her nose slightly and arched an eyebrow, as if she, too, were stunned at Ronan’s uncharacteristic state. And then she looked back at Niall, who suddenly felt like a vagrant in desperate need of a bath. He scrubbed his bristly jaw and cheek. And a shave, too.
“Ye look better,” he said, expecting some sarcastic remark from her regarding his own appearance, as though she would assume the worst…that he had attempted to drown himself in a bottle as well. But she remained prim and collected.
“Thank you. Doctor Stewart agrees, and has allowed me to finally leave my room at Maclaren.”
Niall remembered the luggage strapped to the carriage. “Ye’re not here for a visit.”
She shook her head, her copper eyes drifting away from his. “I’ve come to say goodbye. Lord Leclerc and I are leaving. He received a summons from his maternal grandfather in England, and we plan to stop in Newcastle.”
A drop of silence entered the study. It was so quiet, the sounds of the horses in the courtyard reached them.
“I see. Yes, of course.” Niall wasn’t sure what more to say without ruining yet one more thing. This could be a decent and civil goodbye, or it could devolve into a roiling mess of shouting, or even tears.
Aisla, for one, appeared to be holding herself well in check, and by God, he would do the same. He’d made an ass of himself at the folly, letting his emotions overtake him. He wouldn’t do so again. If anything, he wanted her to smile at him, if only for one more time.
“I dunnae ken if I told ye, but I’ve started to like that painting,” he said, nodding toward the Rubens. Aisla looked at it, still rigid in her posture, her knuckles white from her grip on the walking stick.
“I meant it to torture you,” she said.
“It did,” he said with a short laugh. “But now I cannae stop looking at it, most of the time.”
He knew why. The pain Prometheus was enduring…Niall felt something like it, too, even more so right then. He knew saying as much to Aisla would be a mistake, though. No more guilt.
“Thank ye for redecorating my study,” he said instead. She peered at him, wary of the compliment. “I mean it, Aisla. Yer touches here at Tarben Castle…they’ll remain. Even the portraits of all the dogs, though perhaps no’ the ruffles.”
He expected a smile, but instead, her brows narrowed as if she were distressed. Once again, it hadn’t been the right thing to say. End this, Niall, while ye still can with dignity.
His eye fell to the slender hand holding the cane and the bracelet he could see peeping from her sleeve. The sight of it warmed his heart as if she were taking a piece of him with her.
“Is that the bracelet I made?” he asked, recalling how Aisla had admired the braided band, inlaid with topaz and and two finely cut apatite gems. He remembered when she had bought it with the intent of showcasing the Tarbendale pieces in Paris.
Her eyes followed his, a soft blush staining her cheeks. “Yes. It’s beautiful. And I wanted it to remember Tarbendale and all you’ve done here.”
Then stay.
It was on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed the words.
“Come. I’ll walk ye to the courtyard.”
It would kill him to hand her inside the carriage and watch her ride off, out of his life, once and for all. But he would not be a coward, not again. He’d see this goodbye through.
She moved slowly, he noticed as they left the study, her right leg seeming to be stiff.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
Aisla whipped her head toward him, lips parted, as if puzzled by his question. “Does what hurt?”
“Yer leg,” he answered. Relief transformed her face.
“Oh. My leg. Yes, it does, a little bit. But nothing terrible.”
“What did ye think I meant?”
They made their way down the corridor, toward the wide stairs that would empty out into the foyer. Aisla looked suddenly bashful, and not at all composed as she’d been when she’d first appeared in his study.
Blushing, she answered, “I thought you meant my leaving Scotland.”
Niall’s hand shot out, as if on its own volition, and took hold of her arm, stopping her. He stared into her eyes, words thrashing around inside his mind…and regret, so much desperate regret. His chest closed tight.
“Aisla,” he choked out, not knowing what more he should say. He wanted to apologize for the things he’d said at the folly. He wanted to confess that he’d been wrong, that he’d been a jealous bastard and he wanted just one more chance to prove to her that he’d changed. That he could trust her. That he already did trust her, and that he wouldn’t fail her again. But then, he remembered Leclerc, waiting at the carriage, and how even if he did confess and beg her to stay, it wouldn’t change anything.
A full minute might have passed by as Niall contemplated this all in his head, and Aisla waited patiently, her eyes holding his gaze as he grappled for what to say. But then her eyes shifted, turning to look past Niall’s shoulder.
“M’laird, the lady’s carriage is ready,” Mrs. Wingate said. Though she was his cook, she’d taken on a few of Fenella’s old duties at the keep for the time being.
Of course it was ready. It had come from Maclaren with Aisla and Leclerc inside it, already packed and prepared for their journey. There was truly no need for her to state as much right now, and Niall felt a barb of annoyance at her for in
terrupting him.
“Thank ye, Mrs. Wingate, we’ll be down in a moment,” he said.
“Yes, laird. Will there be anything else?” she asked.
He fought the desire to groan. “Nae.”
Aisla looked up at him, her gaze following the cook’s departure. “We haven’t had a chance to speak, but I am sorry for your loss. I know you cared for Fenella.”
Niall felt a twinge of pain in his breast. They’d had her funeral the day before, and despite her confession of what she’d told Dougal and the things she’d done, Niall had let his anger go. He would not carry such a burden, not when she was dead. Love sometimes drove people to madness. She’d had no one else but him, and she’d been his friend.
“I’m sorry she was unkind to ye,” he said. “She told me what she did to break us apart then and now. I should have been…better. I should have been better at many things.”
“Me, too,” she whispered. “I should have been as well.”
He smiled. “We were happy some of the time, were we no’, Aisla?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Aye, more than most of the time.”
Leclerc chose that moment to stride into the hall, halting awkwardly upon seeing the two of them as well as the obvious intimacy of the moment. He cleared his throat, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets. “We should leave before this Scottish weather gets any worse.”
Niall stared at Aisla, wanting more than the seconds they had left. To tell her everything he’d wanted to say in the moments before Mrs. Wingate and then Leclerc interrupted them. But there was a wall up between them now, and with Leclerc standing waiting and the front doors to the castle teeming with a barrage of servants moving Aisla’s remaining trunks to the carriage, the wall seemed impenetrable.
Niall felt everything start to close in on him. This was it. He rubbed his hand on his coat and felt something in the pocket. He wanted to hold on to it, but it was hers.
“Before I forget,” he said, reaching in for the dagger and handing it to her. “This is yers.”
Sweet Home Highlander_Tartans and Titans Page 27
